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Monday, March 27, 2017

It is a
cruel world we live in, when the time for sleep is never the time we want it to
be. Ever.

There are,
of course, exceptions, but speaking from my own personal experience, I’m not
sure I’ve ever really been able to go to sleep exactly when I wanted. I can’t
remember a single time (although I also can’t remember what I had for dinner
last night) that I’ve had the pleasure of announcing, “I’m tired. I’m going to
bed and no one or nothing is going to stop me.”

As tiny
infants we know no better and haven’t yet adjusted to any sort of schedule.
After living in darkness for all of our lives, we suddenly find ourselves with
lights and sun and lovely people who are trying to train us to sleep at times
when we really don’t want to, but aren’t sure why.

As toddlers
and preschoolers, we start to slowly learn about all of the fun things we are
missing when those big, lovely people make us go to bed. We may not understand
anything like the TV shows that come on after 9:00 or the blissfulness of
reading a book that doesn’t have pictures or rhyme, but we are certain that a
mysterious wonder world exists when we are forced to sleep.

As young children,
we flat out know what we are missing. We are missing the good snacks, the funny
movies. We are missing secretive conversations about grown up things that we
may not understand, but sound fascinating. Words like “mortgage” and “carbohydrate”
bounce around in our heads like a foreign and alluring language.

Then we get
a little older and even if we weren’t the slightest bit tired, someone barks
out that there is school tomorrow and something about getting a full night of
sleep being good for us or else we won’t grow or learn or ever be able to pass
calculus, which is joke crueler than bedtime itself.

By the time
we’re old enough for calculus, we find ourselves shifting into the adult
version of bedtime, when we start to actually want to go bed but can’t because
of calculus homework. Without notice, we dream wistfully about those early
bedtimes as we learn to drink coffee with cream and sugar to stay up late to
study, thinking that life will get better and soon we’ll get the sleep we need.

But life
moves fast, and before you know it, you’re married while there may be a short
bit of time when you actually have a choice on when to sleep, soon enough
there’s a brand new baby in your life and even though you are so very tired,
the sleep schedules are not matching up. (Refer to the third paragraph.)

And even
now, as our children are growing older, I still can’t help but think how much I
would love to hit the pillow if it weren’t for the laundry/work/dishes which I
will dutifully do while I dream wistfully about taking a nap.

Phenology
is the study of seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate
and plant and animal life. Watching the way nature changes with the calendar
can be a neat way to track the world and make ridiculous comparisons and
conclusions about fragrant animals, diapered babies and bow and arrows, and old
cartoons characters with a French accent.

Living in
Ohio, we never know what the weather in February will bring. We can assume
snow, but even the most astute student of phenology will tell you that weather
(not climate) is not what makes most things in nature happen.

So I go to
two reliable signs of February: Love and skunks.

I’m sure
everyone will agree that February is the month of love, with the whole big
candy-filled Valentine’s Day smack dab in the middle of it. But skunks?

If you don’t believe me that February is the
month of skunk, think back over the past few weeks… you’ve smelled a skunk,
haven’t you. You probably even saw a poor, deceased skunk on the road.

Skunks,
like people, start to wake up after the coldest winter months. They don’t
hibernate, they just kind of sleep off the super cold weather, snuggled in
dens, presumably under down blankets with good books and loads of snacks and
hot tea. When the weather warms up enough to venture out, they do (most likely
for more snacks), and then go back to bed while the winter winds blow once
more.

Until
February, that is. February is when these guys and gals officially emerge looking
for love, as if they somehow felt the pressure of the holiday of heart-shaped
heart-felt pledges of adoration. The males, all Pepe Le Pew, look for love by
releasing a bit of stink to attract female skunks—not the black cat with a
white stripe as in the cartoons. This cologne is meant to be a romantic wake up
call for prospective mates. The females, if not attracted by these reeking
dudes, release their own scent to try to encourage them to hit the road and
stink up some other lady.

All this
wooing and loving and stinking back and forth and waking up from a month of
lazy naps makes for one roller coaster of a month for these striped little
critters. Mostly they’re just trying to do their skunk thing at the right time
of year, based, I’m sure, on when the boxes of chocolate and roses go on sale.

So as much
as it stinks, be respectful to your striped starry-eyed-in-love furry
neighbors. Remember how groggy you are when you wake up from a long nap and are
looking for just the right mate, and the best way know you can convince each
other is to release a little perfume from your hind quarters.

The story
itself reads like a fable or a twisted children’s book that ends up with the
entire town dining on soup. In reality, it ended up in our basement freezer
where just our family had the pleasure of dining on it for months to come.

My mother
and I were away at Girl Scout camp, and my father, left to tend to his own
needs, decided to make us a pot of Hamburg’ Soup (we always left off the “er”)
to celebrate our week away in the woods fighting mosquitos, mice, and raccoons.
Like any great chef or soup connoisseur, no recipe was needed. He just started
digging in the fridge and the pantry and throwing things in the pot.

A handful
of this, a pinch of that. And then he’d taste it and think, “Boy, this could
use some [whatever].” And in that would go, followed by a repeat of the last
few steps until he had added so many things that it no longer fit in one pot.

So he got
out another.

By the time
we got home, there were four large, to-the-brim pots of soup simmering on the
stove. I couldn’t have been more than ten, but I still remember the look of
horror on my mother’s face when she first laid eyes on the full stove and the
fuller sink.

Truthfully,
it was delicious soup. To this day, my family still says it was and he has yet
to recreate it, which my mom is probably thankful for, but that’s ok.

That’s the
great thing about soup, though. It’s a big, steaming pot of all sorts of good
things that might be decent on their own, but come together to make one massive,
marvelous delight. A good soup has layers of flavor, but none that stand out
and jump on your tongue and tell the other flavors to go away. They just all
blend together and create joy.

This was
the story I told my kids on a recent dreary February day. Feeling cabin fever
setting in, I thought in my mothering genius that I could give the kids all
cutting boards and knives and let them have free range of the kitchen to make a
pot of Hamburg’ Soup, in the style of my dad, sans recipe.

“You don’t
need a recipe for Hamburg’ Soup,” I told them. “You make it with your heart.”

While there
was a bit of a learning curve with how to dice onions and not massacre them, by
the end of the afternoon we had all contributed something to this huge pot—but
only one—of soup. I have to say that it turned out pretty fantastic. We ate it
for three days and I snuck the last of the leftovers while they all were away
at school.

If you add
up the ages of all of my children, I’ve been a mom for almost 38 years, which
is almost as long as I’ve been on this Earth. You might think that I have most
things figured out. I know I did. But as it turns out, you’re never too old a
mom to learn new tricks.

This tip
came from the brilliant family of the child who has the locker next to my
oldest daughter. Both freshmen in high school, one day my daughter saw him pull
a girly lunchbox out of his bookbag. There must have been an exchange of
expressions and the explanation followed.

“I forgot
my lunchbox at school yesterday so my mom packed my lunch in this princess
Lunchbox of Shame. I’m never going to forget it at school again.”

Upon hearing
this story, my eyes got wide and I probably stood there, mouth agape, wondering
why I hadn’t thought of this long, long ago. While our children are pretty good
at remembering to bring their lunch boxes home, they are terrible at remembering
to unpack them. We’re those weird “save the Earth” people who pack everything
in reusable containers and have no-waste lunches, so the unpacking of
containers is kind of important. It becomes even more important over an
extended weekend when I unzip the forgotten box early in the morning to find 4
day old strawberries that could double as a science project. I don’t make the
kids do many chores, and throwing plastic containers in the sink after I’ve
done all the packing isn’t too much to ask, right?

Needless to
say, I immediately wanted to adopt this marvelous parenting tool. It was
enforced that very day. “Don’t let this happen to you!” I stated, and sat back
to wait and see what would happen.

It only
took a couple of days for someone to forget and in my great excitement of
packing a princess lunchbox, I was defeated on two counts. One, I couldn’t find
the lunchbox I was planning on using. And two, it was my youngest daughter who
would be accepting of said lunchbox, totally defeating the purpose of
humiliation and oh yeah, a life lesson.

So instead
she was awarded her salami sandwich in a brown paper bag. But this was no
ordinary bag. It contained special messages in large, bold print. On one side,
“I didn’t unpack my lunchbox and my mom forced me to use this paper bag and a
beautiful tree died for no reason at all. I’m so sorry I was forgetful, little
tree.” And on the other side, “I didn’t unpack my lunchbox and am forced to
carry the Brown Sack of Shame.”

On the
bottom I wrote, “P.S. I still love you. Love, Mom.”

The next
day, everyone unpacked their lunchboxes the second they walked in the door.
This scheme of mine might not work for long, but that’s OK with me. I’ve got
the next Brown Sack of Shame text all ready to go.

My Grandma
would tell anyone who asked, “Your Grandpa gets up at 6:30. He takes his walk,
gets the newspaper, makes coffee, and works the crossword puzzle. I get up at 8:00.
By that time he’s mostly done with the puzzle and have my coffee and
toast--just the heel of the bread.”

She could
lay out their entire day, right down to when she would lay out my Grandpa’s
Pj’s. They loved their routine.

I, on the
other hand, would listen to her story for the seventy-second time and scream to
myself in my head that I would never let a routine tie down my life! I will
live freely and day-by-day, wherever the wind takes me! Life’s an adventure!
And so on and so forth, until I got tired of speaking in exclamation points to
myself.

But then,
my school-aged children began having Mondays off for holidays.

I may not
be quite where my Grandparents were, but I like to refer to Mondays as my day
of Domestic Recovery. I use that day to clean up all of the spontaneous
adventure from the weekend and do all of the planning for the week. I clean,
shop, prep, chop, wash, dry, play, fry, stack, cook, and sit back and look at
how, for at least 30 seconds, I have life in order.

But when
my routine of the week gets thrown off by these extra people that I love so
dearly hanging around, nothing gets done. And suddenly it’s Tuesday and I’m not
ready for anything. In my head I’m screaming again with exclamation marks about
how we can’t live spontaneous lives of adventure and fun if I don’t have my day
of Domestic Recovery to get everything ready!(I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said, “Spontaneity is a meticulous
prepared art.”) There’s no food in the house, no one has clean clothes, I’m
grumpy, and chances are I will forget 2/3 of the things I’m supposed to do that
week because I didn’t have my uninterrupted Monday routine to write them down.

Often
have I dreamed of writing a petition to send to the President of the United
States, filled with hundreds of billions of signatures of people who feel the
same way I do about Monday holidays. And as much as I wish I didn’t need it, I
will explain the importance of routine when trying to juggle a family. When
there’s no Monday, Tuesday through Friday are practically catawampus to the
point of abandon. Everyone is thrown completely off with extra-curriculars, I’m
scraping together PBJ on stale bread, and everyone’s exhausted from trying to
remember which day the trash is getting picked up.

Maybe
someday I’ll find solace in waking up and knowing what day it is by grabbing
the paper at 6:30, but for now, without my Mondays I don’t know when I’ll have
time for anything, let alone drafting that petition.

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Karrie McAllister writes and mothers from Small Town, Ohio, where she is also in the running for having the most unrelated part time jobs. Her column, Dirt Don't Hurt, has appeared on numerous Web sites and newspapers since 2005, and this blog is how she keeps track of them all until she can publish another book. Contact her at KarrieMcAllister [at] aol.com